Dive at Bare Island, La Perouse, NSW on Tuesday 17 March 2015

Dive Details

Location

Date

Tuesday 17 March 2015

Time

11:08am - 12:52pm

Details

The waters around Bare Island were very calm today and we probably could have dived anywhere off the island. We decided to go to the caves on the north-west corner to look at the tiny skeleton shrimp, interesting nudibranchs and of course, pygmy pipehorses.

We got in on the northern shore of the island, descended and swam past the boulders, outboard motor, over the sand and down the slope to the caves on the corner. We had a quick look at the sentry pygmy pipehorses along the way. Kim showed me the tiny pink pregnant skeleton shrimp. I wasn't able to get a decent photo of it because it was so small. I will have to try again.

I knew that the yellowish white pygmy pipehorse I'd seen on a night dive 2 weeks ago was in the area so I set out to find it. I did find it and it wasn't far from the skeleton shrimp. I also found a pink one which might have been the one Tomas pointed out but had disappeared before I could take photos. I had a good look around the area so I could make sure I'd find the spot again.

We looked around the area for a bit and started to head back, slowly checking all the rocks for pygmies and nudibranchs. As we moved I also realised that the rock we first saw the huge angler on wasn't all that far from the pygmies, too, so I now had to reference points for location.

I discovered a tiny pink juvenile pygmy pipehorse on one of the rocks and think I can find that location again. Eventually, we made our way back to the sponge and sea tulip covered rocks where we'd seen 3 pygmies yesterday. I managed to find two of them again.

We started on back to the exit and I stopped on the way to take a few more photographs of the sentry pipehorses before catching up to Kim. We exited where we entered.

All up a great dive, over 100 minutes and 7 pygmy pipehorses, one more than yesterday.

Buddy

Kim Dinh

Seas

Slight

Visibility

3 to 5 metres

Duration

104 minutes

Maximum depth

14.8 m

Average depth

10.8 m

Water temperature

21.8°C

Dive Profile from Citizen Hyper Aqualand

Tides at Botany Bay AEDT

Note that tides at dive site may vary from above location.

High

6:20am

1.71m

Low

12:59pm

0.33m

High

7:03pm

1.45m

Camera gear

Camera

Nikon D7000

Lens

Nikon AF Micro-Nikkor 60mm f/2.8D

Housing

Ikelite 6801.70

Lens port

Ikelite Flat Port 5502.41

Strobe

2 x Ikelite SubStrobe DS161

Photographs

Depth information, where present, indicates the depth of the camera when the photograph was taken and can be used to approximate the depth of the subject.